Although her desk was replete with the very latest office equipment appropriate to an experienced legal secretary, it had been a very long time since she had actually taken a letter, or a brief, or typed one. She had three assistants, two women and a man,who handled dictation and typing and similar chores.
Irene Craig's function, as both she and Colonel Mawson and Mr. Payne saw it, was to control the expenditure of their time. It was, after all, the only thing they really had to sell, and it was a finite resource. One of the very few things on which Colonel Mawson and Mr. Payne were in complete agreement was that Mrs. Craig performed her function superbly.
Brewster C. Payne, therefore, was not annoyed when he saw Mrs. Craig enter his office. She knew what he was doing, reviewing a lengthy brief about to be submitted in a rather complicated maritime disaster, and that he did not want to be disturbed unless it was a matter of some import that just wouldn't wait. She was here,ergo sum, something of bona fide importance demanded his attention.
Brewster Cortland Payne II was a tall, dignified, slim man in his early fifties. He had sharp features and closely cropped gray hair. He was sitting in a high-backed chair, upholstered in blue leather, tilted far back in it, his crossed feet resting on the windowsill of the plate-glass window that offered a view of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge and Camden, New Jersey. The jacket of his crisp cord suit was hung over one of the two blue leather upholstered Charles Eames chairs facing his desk. The button-down collar of his shirt was open, and his regimentally striped necktie pulled down. His shirt cuffs were rolled up. He had not been expecting anyone, client or staff, to come into his office.
"The building is gloriously aflame, I gather," he said, smiling at Irene Craig, "and you are holding the door of the very last elevator?"
"You're not supposed to do that," she said. "When there's a fire, you're supposed to walk down the stairs."
"I stand chastised," he said.
"I hate to do this to you," she said.
"But?"
"Martha Peebles is outside."
Brewster C. Payne II's raised eyebrows made it plain that he had no idea who Martha Peebles was.
"Tamaqua Mining," Irene Craig said.
"Oh," Brewster C. Payne said. "She came to us with Mr. Foster?"
"Right."
One of the factors that had caused the Executive Committee of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester to offer James Whitelaw Foster, Esq., a junior partnership with an implied offer somewhere not too far down the pike of a full partnership was that he would bring with him to the firm the legal business of Tamaqua Mining Company, Inc. It was a closely held corporation with extensive land and mineral holdings in northeast Pennsylvania near, as the name implied, Tamaqua, in the heart of the anthracite region.
"And I gather Mr. Foster is not available?" Payne asked.
"He's in Washington," Irene said. "She's pretty upset. She's been robbed."
"Robbed?"
"Robbed. I think you better see her."
"Where's the colonel?" Payne asked.
"If he was here, I wouldn't be in here," she said. Payne couldn't tell if she was annoyed with him, or tolerating him. "He's with Bull Bolinski."
"With whom?"
"World-famous tennis player," Irene Craig said.
"I don't place him, either," Payne said, after a moment.
"Oh, God," she said, in smiling exasperation."Bull Bolinski. He was a tackle for the Green Bay Packers. You really never heard the name, did you?"
"No, I'm afraid I haven't," Payne said. "And now you have me wholly confused, Irene."
"The colonel's at the Bellevue-Stratford, with the Bull, who is now a lawyer and representing a reporter, who's negotiating a contract with theBulletin."
"Why is he doing that?" Payne asked, surprised, and thinking aloud. The legal affairs of thePhiladelphia Bulletin were handled by Kenneth L. McAdoo.
"Because he wanted to meet the Bull," Irene Craig said.
"I think I may be beginning to understand," Payne said. "You think I should talk to Mrs… Whatsername?"
"Peebles," Irene Craig replied."Miss Martha Peebles."
"All right," Payne said. "Give me a minute, and then show her in."
"I think you should," Irene Craig said, and walked out of the office.
"Damn," Brewster C. Payne said. He slipped the thick brief he had in his lap and the notes he had made on the desk into the lower righthand drawer of his desk. Then he stood up, rolled down and buttoned his cuffs, buttoned his collar, pulled up his tie, and put his suit jacket on.
Then he walked to the double doors to his office and pulled the right one open.
A woman, a young one (he guessed thirty, maybe thirty-two or -three) looked at him. She was simply but well dressed. Her light brown hair was cut fashionably short, and she wore short white gloves. She was almost, but not quite, good-looking.
Without thinking consciously about it, Brewster C. Payne categorized her as a lady. What he thought, consciously, was that she, with her brother, held essentially all of the stock in Tamaqua Mining, and that that stock was worth somewhere between twenty and twenty-five million dollars.
No wonder Irene made me see her.
"Miss Peebles, I'm Brewster Payne. I'm terribly sorry to have kept you waiting. Would you please come in?"
Martha Peebles smiled and stood up and walked past him into his office. Payne smelled her perfume. He didn't know the name of it, but it was, he thought, the same kind his wife used.
"May I offer you a cup of coffee? Or perhaps tea?" Payne asked.
"That would be very nice," Martha Peebles said. "Coffee, please,"
Payne looked at Irene Craig and saw that she had heard. He pushed the door closed, and ushered Martha Peebles onto a couch against the wall, and settled himself into a matching armchair. A long teakwood coffee table with drawers separated them.
"I'm very sorry that Mr. Foster is not here," Payne said. "He was called to Washington."
"It was very good of you to see me," Martha Peebles said. "I'm grateful to you."
"It's my pleasure, Miss Peebles. Now, how may I be of assistance?"
"Well," she said, "I have been robbed… and there's more."
"Miss Peebles, before we go any further, how would you feel about my turning on a recording machine? It's sometimes very helpful…"
"A recording machine?" she asked.
"A recording is often very helpful," Payne said.
She looked at him strangely, then said, "If you think it would be helpful, of course."
Payne tapped the switch of the tape recorder, under the coffee table, with the toe of his shoe.
"You say you were robbed?"
"I thought you said you were going to record this," Martha Peebles said, almost a challenge.
"I am," he said. "I just turned it on. The switch is under the table. The microphone is in that little box on the table."
"Oh, really?" she said, looking first at the box and then under the coffee table. "How clever!"
"You were saying you were robbed?"
"You could have turned it on without asking, couldn't you?" Martha Peebles said. "I would never have known."
"That would have been unethical," he said. "I would never do something like that."
"But you could have, couldn't you?"
"Yes, I suppose I could have," he said, realizing she had made him uncomfortable. "But you were telling me you were robbed. What happened?"
There was a brief tap at the door, and Edward F. Joiner, a slight, soft-spoken man in his middle twenties who was Irene Craig's secretary, came in, carrying a silver coffee set. He smiled at Martha Peebles, and she returned it shyly, as he set the service on the table.
"I'll pour, Ed," Payne said. "Thank you."
Martha Peebles took her coffee black, and did not care for a doughnut or other pastry.
"You were saying you were robbed?" Payne said.
"At home," she said. "In Chestnut Hill."
"How exactly di
d it happen? A burglar?"
"No, I'm quite sure it's not a burglar," she said. "I even think I know who did it."
"Why don't you start at the very beginning?" Payne said.
Martha Peebles told Brewster Payne that two weeks before, two weeks plus a day, her brother Stephen had brought home a young man he had met.
"A tall, rather good-looking young man," she said. "His name was Walton Williams. Stephen said that he was studying theater at the University of Pennsylvania."
"And is your brother interested in the theater?" Payne asked, carefully.
"I think rather more in young actors than in the theater, per se," Martha Peebles said, matter-of-factly, with neither disapproval nor embarrassment in her voice.
"I see," Payne said.
"Well, they stayed downstairs, in the recreation room, and I went to my room. And then, a little after midnight, I heard them saying good night on the portico, which is directly under my windows."
"And you think there's a chance this Williams chap is involved in the robbery?"
"There's no question about it," she said.
"How can you be sure?"
"I saw him," she said.
"I'm afraid I've become lost somewhere along the way," Payne said.
"Well, the next night, about half-past eight, I was having a bath when the doorbell rang. I ignored it-"
"Was there anyone else in the house? Your brother? Help?"
"We keep a couple," she said. "But they leave about seven. And Stephen wasn't there. He had gone to Paris that morning."
"So you were alone in the house?"
"Yes, and since I wasn't expecting anyone, I just ignored the bell."
"I see. And then what happened?"
"I heard noises in my bedroom. The door opening, then the sound of drawers opening. So I got out of the tub, put a robe on, and opened the door a crack. And there was Walton Williams, at my dresser, going through my things."
"What did you do then?" Payne asked. This is a very stupid young woman, he thought. She could have gotten herself in serious difficulty, killed, even, just walking in on a situation like that.
And then he changed "stupid" in his mind to "naive" and " inexperienced and overprotected."
"I asked him just what he thought he was doing," Martha Peebles said, "and he just looked at me for a moment, obviously surprised to find someone home, and then he ran out of the room and down the stairs and out of the house."
"And you believe he stole something?" Payne asked.
"Iknow he stole things," she said. "I knowexactly what he stole from me. All my valuable pins and pendants, and all of Mother's jewelry that was in the house."
"And where was your mother when this was going on?" Payne asked.
This earned him a cold and dirty, almost outraged, look.
"Mother passed on in February," she said. "I would have thought you would know that."
"I beg your pardon," Payne said. "I did not."
"Most of her good things were in the bank, of course, but there were some very nice pieces at home. There was a jade necklace, jade set in gold, that she bought in Dakarta, and this Williams person got that. I know she paid ten thousand dollars for that; I had to cable her the money."
"You called the police, of course?" Payne asked.
"Yes, and they came right away, and I gave them a description of Stephen's friend, and an incomplete list, later completed, of everything that was missing. Mr. Foster took care of that for me."
"Well, I'm glad the firm was able to be of some help," Payne said. " Would you take offense if I offered a bit of advice?"
"I came here seeking advice," Martha Peebles said.
"I don't think anything like this will ever happen to you again in your lifetime," Payne said. "But if it should, I really think you would be much better off not to challenge an intruder. Just hide yourself as well as you can, let him take what he wants, and leave. And then you call the police."
"It's already happened again," she said, impatiently.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Last Sunday, Sunday a week ago, not yesterday. I had gone out to the Rose Tree Hunt for the buffet-"
"I was there," Payne interrupted, "my wife and I. And my oldest son."
"-and when I returned home," Martha Peebles went on, oblivious to the interruption, "and stepped inside the door from the driveway, I heard sounds, footsteps, in the library. And then he must have heard me… I'm convinced it was Stephen's young man, but I didn't actually see him, for he ran out the front door."
"You didn't confront him again?"
"No, I called the police from the telephone in the butler's pantry."
"And they came?"
"Right away," she said. "And they searched the house, and they found where he had broken a pane of glass in the greenhouse to gain entrance, and I found out what was stolen this time. A Leica camera, Stephen's-I don't know why he didn't take it to France, but he didn't, I had seen it that very morning-and some accessory lenses for it, and Daddy's binoculars… and some other things."
"Miss Peebles," Payne said. "The unpleasant fact is that you will probably never be able to recover the things that were stolen. But if Mr. Foster has been looking after your interests, I'm confident that your insurance will cover your loss."
"I'm not concerned about acamera, Mr. Payne," she said. "I'm concerned for my safety."
"I really don't think whoever has done this will return a third time, Miss Peebles," Payne said. "But a few precautions-"
"He was back again last night," she interrupted him. "That's why I'm here now."
"I didn't know," Payne said.
"This time he broke in the side door," she said. "And cut himself when he was reaching through the pane he broke out; there was blood on the floor. This time he stole a bronze, a rather good Egyptian bronze Daddy had bought in Cairo as a young man. Small piece, about eight inches tall. And some other, personal items."
"Such as?"
Her face flushed.
"He went through my dresser," she said, softly, embarrassed, "and stole a half dozen items of underclothing."
"I see," Payne said.
"Specifically," she said, apparently having overcome her discomfiture, "he made off with all my black undies, brassieres, and panties."
"Just the black?" Payne asked, furious with himself for wanting to smile. What this young woman was telling him was not only of great importance to her, but very likely was symptomatic of a very dangerous situation. While a perverse corner of his brain was amused by the notion of an "actor," almost certainly a young gentleman of exquisite grace, making off with this proper young woman's black underwear, it wasn't funny at all.
"Just the black," she said.
"Well, the first thing I think you might consider is the installation of a security system-"
"We've had Acme Security since Daddy built the house," she said. " Until now, I thought it provided a measure of security. Their damned alarm system doesn't seem to work at all."
"May I suggest that you ask them to come and check it out?" Payne said.
"I've already done that," she said. "They say there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. WhatI think is that people like Stephen's young man know about things like that, and know how to turn them off, render them useless, and Acme just doesn't want to admit that's possible."
She's probably right.
"Another possibility, for the immediate future," Payne said, "until the police can run this Williams chap to ground, is to move, temporarily, into a hotel."
"I have no intention of having someone like that drive me from my home," Martha Peebles said, firmly. "What I had hoped to hear from Mr. Foster, Mr. Payne, is that he has some influence with the police, and could prevail upon them to provide me with more protection than they so far have."
"I frankly don't know what influence Mr. Foster has with the police, Miss Peebles-"
"Well, that's certainly a disappointment," she interrupted him.
"But as I
was about to say, Colonel Mawson, a senior partner of the firm, is a close personal friend of Police Commissioner Czernick."
"Well, then, may I see him please?"
"That won't be necessary, Miss Peebles. As soon as he walks through the door, I'll bring this to his attention."
"Where is he now?"
"Actually," Payne said, "he's at the Bellevue-Stratford. With a chap called Bull Bolinski."
"The Packers' Bull Bolinski?" Miss Peebles asked, brightening visibly.
"Yes, the Packers' Bull Bolinski."
"Oh, I almost cried when he announced his retirement," Martha Peebles said.
"He's now an attorney, you know."
"I hadn't heard that," she said. "And I'd forgotten this has all been recorded, hasn't it?"
"Yes, it has. And I'll have it transcribed immediately."
Martha Peebles stood up and offered Brewster C. Payne II her hand.
"I can't tell you how much better I feel, Mr. Payne, after having spoken to you. And thank you for seeing me without an appointment."
"That was my pleasure," Payne said. "Anytime you want to see me, Miss Peebles, my door is always open. But I wish you would consider checking into a hotel for a few days…"
"I told you, I will not be run off by people like that," she said, firmly. "Good morning, Mr. Payne."
He walked with her to the door, then to the elevator, and saw her on it.
When he walked back into his office, Irene Craig followed him,
"What the devil is wrong with the cops?" she asked. "She gave them a description of this creep, even if that was a phony name."
"Why do I suspect that you were, as a figure of speech, out there all the time with your ear to my keyhole?" he asked.
"You knew I would be monitoring that," she said. "I also had Ed take it down on the stenotype machine. I should have a transcript before the colonel gets back."
"Good girl!" he said.
"There are some women in my position who would take high umbrage at a sexist remark like that," she said. "But I'll swap compliments. You handled her beautifully."
"Now may I go back to work, boss?" Payne said.
"Oh, I think the colonel can handle this from here," she said, and walked out of his office.
Brewster Cortland Payne II returned to his brief.
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